Following up a massive Top Ten single in Babylon's Burning was never going to be an easy matter and as a foretaste of the up and coming Debut Album The Crack, Ruts released the most excellent Something That I Said.

Something That I Said had previously been recorded for the band's second John Peel Session recorded on the 14 May 1979. You can have a listen to the full session here. This third single (and second for Virgin) doesn't often get the kudos I think it deserves and that's why it's a cool thing to include it as part of the 45RPM Series.

The B-Side, Give Youth A Chance was originally titled Black Man's Pinch and was part of the Debut Session for John Peel in January 1979. A lot of people always go on about how great The Clash were when it came to the use of Reggae in their songs and rightly so but personally I think the Ruts were so much better at it than Strummer and Co. The band had a genuine affection for Reggae and no doubt hanging out with the likes of Misty in Roots improved their playing of it and made it sound quite natural, whereas with The Clash sometimes it comes across a bit forced! I'll probably get a few fans of The Clash give me grief for that, but I think I am in a position to say it as I am also a fan of them!

Anyway, don't get too caught up in the whole issue of who played Reggae the best and miss out on what was a cracking single.

*Sugar Mountain was the B-Side for the US and Japan release but in Europe the B-Side was After The Gold Rush!

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Down through the years since the release of After The Gold Rush many words have been written in praise of it. I only wish to add to that great mountain by saying that surely this is one of The Greatest Albums Ever Made! I say that not because I am a huge Neil Young Fan, because I'm not at all, but I say this because the sheer quality of the music on it forces me to say it.

Just about 20 days ago we had a little look at the third studio album from The Mamas and The Papas. Today though we are going to have a quick glimpse at the second album that was released on this very day in 1966. There's a wee spot of drama surrounding it that's quite interesting. More about that in a moment though.

The band had already enjoyed some early success with their debut album hitting the #1 spot on the charts. California Dreamin' had given them a #4 Single and Monday Monday their first #1 Single but all was not well within the camp. Life is not always a series of events that bring success and joy, you can pretty much guarantee that somewhere along the road there will be "trouble ahead" (as the old song says).

That trouble first came when Michelle Phillips had "a liason" with fellow band member Denny Doherty sometime in 1965. John Phillips had forgiven Doherty and they had reconciled and wrote about the event in the lead single for the new album, I Saw Her Again. There has been some debate as to how much Doherty had actually contributed to the song. During the recording of the second album though news came out that Michelle Phillips had been involved in an affair with Gene Clark of The Byrds. This provoked John Phillips to call for her to be fired from the band. So on 28th June 1966 Michelle was fired by her bandmates.

With such a void to fill in the group Jill Gibson was hired as replacement. After being introduced to the band by its producer, Lou Adler, she was soon taking part in concerts (at Forest Hills, New York, Denver, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona) television appearances (Hollywood Palace on ABC), and recording sessions. While Gibson was a quick study and well regarded, the three original members concluded that she lacked her predecessor's "stage charisma and grittier edge", and Michelle Phillips was reinstated on August 23, 1966. Jill Gibson, so nearly a full-time Mama, left and was paid a lump sum from the group's funds.

It remains unclear whose vocals appear on The Mamas & The Papas as released on August 30, 1966. Gibson says she sang all but two songs. Studio documents appear to show that Michelle Phillips had already recorded six songs for the album in April 1966, including the singles I Saw Her Again and Words of Love. Lou Adler has said, "We recorded Jill on six songs ... got six vocal performances out of her, which we later replaced, some of 'em."Michelle Phillips has said that she does not know who is singing on the album: "There's no way to know who sang on what, because we both sang on all the parts, and it was up to Bones [Howe] and Lou [Adler] and John [Phillips] what was in the final mix. And they had a lot to choose from! When you listen to the second album ... listen to it ... because I swear I don't have any idea who's singing on it."

I wasn't aware of this particular note regarding the album before so it's quite interesting how quickly they must have been working from the moment Michelle Phillips was thrown out of the band and Gibson brought in to record her parts for the album:

The photo already chosen for the album's cover featured Michelle Phillips prominently, so Dunhill had Gibson take a photo posed in exactly the same position as Michelle, and then superimposed the new photo over that of Phillips. However, the decision was then made to shoot an entirely new picture with the new line-up, and to also change the album's title to Crashon Screamon All Fall Down. Several thousand advance pressings of the album with this cover and title were sent out to radio stations and record distributors, but with the return of Michelle to the group just prior to the LP's general release, the original cover and eponymous title were quickly reinstated. Copies of the rare Crashon pressings are now highly sought after collectors items.

Back in March as part of the Rewind Series I spotlighted The Idiot by Iggy Pop and Lust For Life is the follow up, also produced in league with David Bowie.The album was made over the space of eight days following the completion of Iggy's tour for The Idiot. Like The Idiot it was also recorded at the Hansa Studios in Berlin. David Bowie had a hand in composing the music for seven out of the nine songs whilst all but Turn Blue (Pop and Walter Lacey) are lyrcially the work of Iggy Pop.Up until the release of his lastest album Post Pop Depression, Lust For Life was his best selling album and whilst at first it sold well in the USA the death of Elvis Presley caused RCA to quickly reissue Presley's catalogue and any promotional focus for Pop's album was lost. It eventually performed well in America, but only peaked at number 120 on the Billboard charts at the time of release. The actions of RCA would of course not only impact the sales of Iggy's Album but a number of other artists as well. Here in the UK the Punk band The Boys had just issued their debut album but the big problem was people just couldn't find it anywhere and as RCA seemed soley committed to pressing Presley albums by the truckload the danger was the album would just disappear!I still have visions of Iggy Pop on The White Room for Channel 4 performing Lust For Life wearing very little apart from see-through trousers! (You Can Watch the Video HERE). The title track also got a new lease of life when it was included in the Soundtrack for Trainspotting and Iggy made a new video for it that had cuts from the film included in it! He still opens his show with it as well, check out this one from the Royal Albert Hall in London earlier this year!

In my 53 years of life, Music is one of those things that still has the abiltity to take me by surprise. Here's the latest one to capture me!

Kiefer Sutherland is a man who is used to telling stories with a wide array of characters in films or on TV shows but this time around his choice of script is a song, 11 of them to be precise that he has co-written with Jude Cole (and one with Cole and J. Wade) and put out on his debut album Down In A Hole.His father, actor Donald Sutherland, bought him a guitar when he was 13 and he's been playing and writing music as a hobby ever since. He became so fascinated by the music business that in 2002, he launched a record label called Ironworks that released records from other musicians - including HoneyHoney, Lifehouse and Rocco DeLuca - but he'd only go in the studio himself after everyone else had left.

"It was something that was very private and in fact, I had no intention of ever making an album," Sutherland said.

He started recording songs intending to pitch them to other singers. When his musical partner and producer Jude Cole heard them, he tried to convince the actor to just cut a record himself.

"I am clearly aware of the stigma of an actor doing music and I said, 'Not on your life,'"Sutherland said. "... And he took me to a bar and got me drunk and it started to sound like a better idea."

Sutherland describes the music on his album as "Americana singer songwriter with a country kick." He's got so many songs in the can that he's already working on a second album.He was out touring earlier this year. "We didn’t play any major markets," he says of the trek. "We wanted to go to places where most people don’t stop by, and those people were incredibly generous to us. We didn’t play New York, L.A., Chicago, Nashville or Austin. We’ll earn our way to those spots."

And he's actually quite impressive live from what I've seen of footage on You Tube.

Sunday, 28 August 2016

As I'm a day late with remembering that it was Glen Matlock's birthday yesterday I thought I'd post a little something special that I stumbled upon this morning - Rich Kids on Rock Goes To College. Incredible seeing this footage again after so many years.

Rich Kids were formed in London in 1977 with Glen Matlock, former Sex Pistol on Bass Guitar. Recruited to the band were also Steve New on Guitar and Rusty Egan on Drums and former Slik and PVC2 Guitarist and Vocalist Midge Ure.

The month before Midge Ure joined Rich Kids in 1977 he had been in PVC2 and had released a triple A-Sided Single that featured Put You In The Picture. It's a great single, if not a little rough sounding, it was after all recorded in one take! One of the excellent Scottish Punk Singles I reckon. Some remaining of PVC2 went on to form The Zones.

The Power Pop sound of Rich Kids didn't outlast 1979 as the band split due to musical differences, Egan and Ure wanting to experiment with Synths and add it to the music of the band whilst Matlock and New were wanting a more guitar and drums driven sound.

So with just three singles and an album under their belt they vanished and are forever known as one hit wonders! It's a shame really because they were actually quite good. The album came in for a lot of stick for its Production quality, more was clearly expected of the great Mick Ronson at the controls!

Midge Ure would go on to find success with Ultravox after the departure of John Foxx and Rusty Egan would enjoy some success alongside Steve Strange in Visage. Steve New went on to work with Iggy Pop, Chrissie Hynde, Sid Vicious to name but a few. He passed away in January 2010 following a battle with cancer. Glen Matlock has played with many artists (The Faces, The Damned, Iggy Pop, to name but a few) as well as being involved in his own band Glen Matlock and The Philistines and also The International Swingers alongside James Stevenson and Clem Burke.

When it comes to strange, nobody quite does strange like Devo!The Debut Album from Devo, Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! was released on this day in 1978.A bizzare band that had been around since 1973 but had begun to make a name for themselves when they released a couple of quite magnificent singles in 1977 (they didn't get a UK release until 1978) that included an amazing reworking of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction'. Add to that the fact that David Bowie and Iggy Pop were championing their cause and supposedly with this influence Devo secured a deal with Warner Bros. and then having Brian Eno produce the album they looked set for big things!Where the singles and the album had gained some chart success in the UK, back home in Akron, Ohio they were not having as much joy. Maybe they were just too quirky for America at the time (but the album has sold enough in the States for it to be award a Gold status).

The band received mixed reviews of the album in the States. Critic Robert Christgau of The Village Voice gave the album a positive rating of a B+, but noted, "In small doses it's as good as novelty music ever gets, and there isn't a really bad cut on this album. But it leads nowhere."Tom Carson, writing in Rolling Stone, claimed that "There's not an ounce of feeling anywhere, and the only commitment is to the distancing aesthetic of the put-on", and opined that "Devo lacks most of Eno's warmth and much of Bowie's flair for mechanized melodrama. For all its idiosyncrasies, the music here is utterly impersonal." Both seem quite harsh I think. The band did manage to open the door to other bands from Akron, Ohio when Stiff Records released The Akron Compilation in 1978 (it came with a scratch and sniff cover!).

Wild Planet is the second Studio Album from the Athens, Georgia natives The B-52's. It was released on this day in 1980. Hard to believe it was 36 years ago!

Now, the history of music is littered with bands who were unable to top the sheer quality of their Debut Album with the second one being somewhat of a disappointment. That is not the case with Wild Planet. As hard as it seems, The B-52's went above and beyond their most excellent Debut Record and delivered a second album that is way superior in everyway possible from the quality of the production to the loveability (is that a word?) of the songs.

A few of the songs had been around for a couple of years and had been staples of their live performance but when it came down to recording the Debut they wanted to hold back some tracks from being recorded as they were already thinking ahead to a killer second album.

Many fans of The B-52's (and I include myself in this) consider Wild Planet to be their best album ever. It's easy to see why with such a collection of songs that showed us still the quirky nature of the band (Party Out of Bounds, and Quiche Lorraine), their kinda rocky edge (Runnin' Around, Private Idaho, Strobe Light and Devil In My Car) and also their wonderful pop sensibilities (Dirty Back Road and Give Me Back My Man).

Ultimately what the album showed was that The B-52's were not just a laugh and a joke band but they had between them some serious musical chops. Every track on the album was co-writes between various members of the band the only exception being Dirty Back Road that was a co-write between Ricky Wilson and Robert Waldrop (I don't know much about him but he co-wrote a number of songs by The B-52's - Hero Worship, Deep Sleep, Mesopotamia, Roam, and Revolution Earth).

And so that completes a week of albums from the 1980s. Not sure what will be up next week but hopefully they'll be as good as some of the albums we have posted about this week.

I can remember there being a lot of concern regarding the state of The Jam just prior to release of their fifth single. The band had been recording a third album but many of the songs were penned by Bruce Foxton and Paul Weller had writers block! The word was that the producers and Polydor had rejected the songs by Foxton as being poor quality and told them, though especially Paul Weller to get writing more songs. Weller by his own admission seemed to have to a lack of interest during the writing and recording process at the time.

News of the World, the fourth single had been written by Foxton (the only A-Side he ever had released) and whilst it did break into the charts at #27 it was seen by some as a real demise in quality for the band. For myself I thought the single was actually pretty good.

David Watts / "A" Bomb in Wardour Street - a double A-Side - was released on 26th August as forerunner to the new album that was expected in November 1978. The big question was "what on earth is it going to be like?" was on the lips of many. There had been a number of misgivings regarding their second album, This Is The Modern World (though again it's an album I love very much as do many fans despite the fact that Paul Weller hated it!).

The fact that the band had chosen a cover version as a single (The Kinks had released the original as a B-Side in 1967) seemed a little puzzling at first (but Weller had said that he had been listening to a lot of The Kinks whilst he had been trying to write new material) and the fact that the majority of the vocal on it was by Foxton was also seen as a concern (it seems though it was more suited to Bruce's vocal range due to the key it was played in).

As good as their reading of the Ray Davies song is though it was flipping the disc over and discovering the other A-Side that you began to see that The Jam were back on track with possibly one of Paul Weller's finest songs to date!

"A" Bomb In Wardour Street

Paul Weller

Where the streets are pave with blood,with cataclysmic overtonesFear and hate linger in the airA strictly no-go deadly zoneI don't know what I'm doing here'cause it's not my scene at all

There's an "A" bomb in Wardour StreetThey've called in the Army, they've called in the police

I'm stranded on the Vortex floorMy head's been kicked in and blood's started to pourThrough the haze I can see my girlFifteen geezers got her pinned to the door

There's an "A" bomb in Wardour Street, it's blown up the CityNow it's spreading through the country

Law and order takes a turn for the worst,In the shape of a size 10 bootRape and murder throughout the land,and they tell me that you're still a free manWell if this is freedom I don't understand'cause it seems like madness to me.

A Philistine nation, of degradation,And hate and war. There must be more.It's Doctor Martin's A P O C A L Y P S E Apocalypse!

It makes an interesting read doesn't it? But you know something, this is the kind of violence you were subjected to almost any night if you were up town and if you were a Punk. Weller declared that "it's not my scene at all" and he was right about that, The Jam didn't really fit into the whole Punk Scene but they did ride on the crest of its wave and were often caught up in the violent thuggery of the times that was unleashed against the Punks.

"A" Bomb in Wardour Street was at least a sign that Weller was finding his mojo again and held out some hope that the new album entitled All Mod Cons would be better than its predecessor.

When the album appeared it was like a revelation! In his review for NME, Charles Shaar Murray said that the album was "not only several light years ahead of anything they've done before but also the album that's going to catapult The Jam right into the front rank of international rock and roll; one of the handful of truly essential rock albums of the last few years."